


Swimming Lessons

by p0cketw0tch



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post season finale, drabble and artwork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-14 10:24:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2188233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/p0cketw0tch/pseuds/p0cketw0tch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma hates the pool, but she cannot keep herself from coming back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swimming Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> Artwork and a drabble

Jemma hates the pool, but she cannot keep herself from coming back. Every evening she finds herself swimming, forcing her limbs to move faster, to push further. She keeps a timer at the edge of the pool and counts her laps. Each day she swims a bit faster, lasts a bit longer.

"You’re a better swimmer than I." Fitz had said, but she had not been fast enough or strong enough to save him.

While Jemma is swimming, she focuses hard enough on the task at hand that she can ignore the sensation of liquid surrounding her, the feeling of water closing over her head. The memories and nightmares come later.

It is irrational to hate a liquid or a room, but this past year has filled Jemma with little irrational souvenirs, filled her with memories that freeze her in place and make it difficult for her to breathe. Jemma’s specialty is biology, and the human brain is a fascinating thing, but at times she wishes she could trade her irrational human psych for logical and practical computer circuits.

Shaving seconds off her swim time won’t fix anything. It won’t wake Fitz from his coma; it won’t make him happy, healthy, and whole again. Pushing herself until her muscles are limp and shaking with fatigue won’t let her go back in time and stop Ward from pressing the button to drop them into the ocean below. It won’t keep Fitz from deciding to get so close to the plane. It can’t stop HYDRA from infecting SHIELD and tearing apart everything she knew in a haze of gunfire and suspicion. The nightly ritual accomplishes nothing, and yet…

Jemma hates the pool, but she cannot keep herself from coming back.

And so she swims.

 

 


End file.
